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On 12/12/05, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> The reason I don't use Gnome: every single other window manager I know of
> is very powerfully extensible, where you can switch actions to different
> mouse buttons. Guess which one is not, because it might confuse the poor
> users? Here's a hint: it's not the small and fast one.

Just for the record, since I made this decision I can tell you that
"might confuse people" was not the reason. More evidence for my point
that "might confuse people" is the reason made up by others, not the
reason given by the decision makers.

First some context. The overall metacity plan was to first get all the
defaults right as priority one, and then add more configurability and
options consistent with keeping the defaults right. This was the
driving "principle" if there was a principle at all. (The weekend I
started on metacity the motivation was more "my #@%$ WM doesn't work,
I'm just going to write one that works how I like")

On the specific feature of arbitrary button bindings, the full
discussion is archived in bugzilla. But my memory of this feature is:
- I put in a lot of special cases to get the default behavior exactly right;
the event handlers for mouse buttons do not look like "run the
action associated with
this button," they are more complicated
- I spent a few days trying to code a patch that made button actions
configurable
while preserving all the detailed behaviors I had coded, and I just
kind of gave
up because the patch was too hard/complicated/big and I wasn't willing to
break the default behavior in order to simplify the code.
- I did put in configuration of the most common stuff people wanted to change,
like double click action and alt+click modifier key, and this made
most people
happy (based on reduction in bugzilla/email traffic)

My patch is still in bugzilla, if anyone wants to start from it and
find the simple and elegant way to code it. The patch as I left it is
buggy though and had a couple "hard to fix" problems. Plus it's
against a pretty old version of metacity I guess.

BTW, though I confess that I like to reject window manager patches, I
also spent a ton of time getting EWMH usable and supporting it in
GNOME. The only purpose of EWMH is to make the window manager
replaceable.

You may be noticing that I like the idea of "choice of two
well-focused designs" better than "single choice of one
nobody-hates-it design."

Anyway. The primary issue with preferences in metacity was never
confusing users - that would only be an issue with displaying prefs in
the dialog, i.e. unlimited prefs would be OK, as long as they were
hidden. The more important issue I always had in my mind was the
quality of the defaults, and ability to spend time polishing the
defaults. The tradeoff came from amount of personal time I had, code
complexity, and interdependencies among prefs.

But, I pretty often flamed people complaining about lack of prefs in
bugzilla, so I can't really whine about being misunderstood :-P

> Same with the file dialog. Apparently it's too "confusing" to let users
> just type the filename. So gnome forces you to do the icon selection
> thing, never mind that it's a million times slower.

I don't think "too confusing" was the reason here either, though I
can't speak authoritatively since I didn't design this.

There was also a bad rap here since in the original design spec (and
current file selector) you can in fact just type the filename. The
text entry box appears as soon as you press a key. You can also press
Ctrl+L to get a text box with autocomplete. But version 1.0 didn't
have this since the coders ran out of time.

I'd also point out that OS X makes the same basic decision as GNOME to
avoid the "foo/bar" path notation in the default UI, so while it
(agreed) is not ideal for users who are primarily shell users, I don't
think it's a particularly radical or unprecedented choice in the big
picture.

I don't use GNOME and I like KDE. But I can tell, if it wasn't for GNOME, QT wouldn't have been released under the GPL and KDE wouldn't have been as good as it is. Competition is good and multiple choices are even better.

I'm not sure if this is really news. Linus Torvalds is a great organizer and his technical abilities regarding kernel design are phenomenal. But as credentials for a user interface designer, that's all irrelevant. Perhaps even a negative.

In this case, I can't help but feel that he, as much as I respect him, is just "some guy", who doesn't use Gnome, complaining on the list. No more and no less.

Frankly, XFce puts 'em both to shame. ;-) Of course, Elightenment is the only other usable desktop for GNU/Linux. Enlightenment and XFce don't force you to rely on the taskbar when you can click where you are to launch an app. Well, if we're going to have a flame war, may as well make it interesting.

Don't forget that a lot of people, including adults, still love cartoons. If you stopped watching cartoons, you are missing on sonething.

Good point about emulating and not innovating more, that is why I say we should move ahead and not spend too much time on trying to be like MS and have everything MS has. KDE is pursuing that in their new version of KDE 4 especially Super Karamba and KDE Plasma. Of course this is not for servers, but hey, what is the percentage of servers compared to desktops?

Just to chime in... there's a big difference between KDE, a desktop + very integrated applicaitons, and a window manager.

XFce is pretty much a window manager. If you like CDE, you'll like XFce. I don't see much value add above what CDE gave us old time Unix users.... and personally I'm really not sure why someone would try to replicate it (???).

If I were to go back to just a wm, I'd look at blackbox, fvwm2 or icewm.... oh and btw... I used to be an XFce user because at one time it was cool to show Linux looking like a commercial Unix box (that was back in the days when even Lesstif was not fully functional).

Just my opinion.

KDE is a whole integrated enviornment where pieces of one application automagically are used and embedded when needed inside of other applications... and that's pretty cool. It has a ton of other features that differentiates it from a mere wm as well.

Does that mean it's FAT? Sure. So there's always room for just a wm.

Occasionally when I install servers (not workstations) I'll want a very basic X11 with just a simple wm. Good enough. Even then, I won't use it much.

When I first started using Linux full time, about 3 years ago, I kept both a Kde and an iceWM desktop. Both of these offered advantages. There was a speed advantage with iceWM, but, Kde was a little more full featured. As time went on Kde became faster and it was just to much trouble to maintain 2 Desktops, so I now stick with KDE, although, I would recommend iceWM to anyone needing a lighter interface.

Tom says: KDE reminds me of watching cartoons
That's very dependent on how KDE is configured. If one turns down the bells and whistle factor, Kde can look close to as austere as XFCE or other light WM's. Just because features like Super Karamba and KDE Plasma are available addon's, doesn't mean that you 'have to' use them. It's up to the user to determine the level of eyecandy that he can tolerate, and if you like cartoons, you can have those too.

richo123 says: Cons: Cluttered layout. Slow
Again, if Kde is properly configured it's not cluttered at all. I run a clean desktop.. no icons. As for 'slow', I think a lot of that is related to the hardware resources you have available. I know that I see very little difference, but, despite their claims, Gnome runs slower than any of the others.

While I agree with Linus that Gnome's way of doing things is 'limiting', I use a lot of GTK based programs and think that many are better than the QT equivalents. Actually, it's cooperation between the two that has allowed the apps to run well in both environments. So, I really don't want to see a world with no Gnome, or encourage any hostility. That's totally counter productive.

I still read the funnies! I even enjoy watching cartoons - except that I miss Bugs Bunny & Scooby Doo! I sure hope too much doesn't change between now and next year - I'm gettin' up around that age now myself.

Well, to be honest, I occasionally watch the old Star Trek animated series if that counts. Most people do not realize that the first instance of a holodeck was not in "Star Trek: The Next Generation", but on the original Enterprise, NCC-1701.

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